


Through Time and Space

by griever11



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, In denial that a season 8 exists, Post 722, Reunion, Romance, olicity - Freeform, post ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-06 00:04:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18839533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/griever11/pseuds/griever11
Summary: Post finale. Felicity has a plan, and she's going to make sure she sees it through right to the end. When your love is bigger than the freakin' universe, that's the least you can do.





	Through Time and Space

He feels it the moment it happens. A ripple.

A disturbance in the air.

It’s not new, nor strange, or even remotely concerning - not after how much time he’s spent doing this.

But a ripple is a ripple and it’s the first sign of a potential crisis. 

And when there’s a crisis forthcoming, he’s obliged to seek it out. It’s his duty. His destiny.

His punishment.

So with a weary sigh, he focuses on the ripple, calls upon the ancient celestial magic that’s been bestowed upon him and sets out to investigate it.

* * *

 

 

The Monitor disappears the moment she steps through the portal.

He tells her that what she’s attempting is dangerous and has never been done before, but he wishes her good luck and then... he’s just gone.

The light that surrounds her at first is blinding, but then she blinks and the light winks out and she finds herself...

Somewhere.

And nowhere.

But she knows what she has to do.

When she looks down at her feet, she has to keep herself from shrieking out loud because she’s not standing on anything. Or - she is, but she can’t see it and it’s wholly unnerving and disconcerting but maybe this is how travelling through time and space works?

Suddenly, she remembers that in her entire existence, all those years dealing with aliens and alternate universes and other Earths - she’s never actually left _her_ Earth.

It’s always been Oliver.

_Why does it always have to be you?_

“This is too much,” she mumbles to herself. Only to hear her voice echoing loudly back at her. “‘Kay, weird.”  

_Weird, weird, weird._

It’s completely dark, the air around her shimmering in a gossamer-like sheen and it kind of feels like she’s suspended inside a bubble. She’s still breathing though, so she’s not _in_ space even if it does look like she’s floating through the galaxy.

She takes a careful step forward, her heart thumping in her chest - and then cheering quietly when she doesn’t just fall into the nothingness around her.

She sucks in a grateful, shaky breath and keeps moving forward, letting her instinct guide her through the emptiness.

* * *

 

Ripples aren’t as serious as tears in the fabric of time and space so he he doesn’t really hurry.

The ever present ache in his heart intensifies when he thinks about the concept of time and space, and how Felicity would kill to discuss the intricacies of this subject with him. He’d be able to now; he’s sort of an expert on it.

He forces himself to shake the feeling off.

Can’t get distracted.

Find the ripple. Fix the ripple. Don’t think about Felicity.

Easier said than done, even after so long.

He remembers a time when he’d been single-mindedly determined to finish this... _task_ that had been thrust upon him.

Remembers a time when his first instinct was always to fix everything that needed fixing as quickly as he can.

Remembers thinking that maybe if he does that, if by some miracle he fixes every single broken strain of existence, he’ll finally be allowed to go home to his love, to his family. 

To his heart.

He fought every battle like it was his last. Turned to the skies after he saved each universe, with hope that when he opens his eyes, it’s to the loving blue of his love’s eyes and to the comforting heat of his baby’s skin.

But with every win, with every bad, cruel reality that he repairs, there are others that fall apart. And they don’t stop falling apart. He travels from universe to universe seeking the end to his watch, but the end, he finds out, is a myth.

See, what the Monitor hadn’t told him when he made this deal, was that _balance_ , and _keeping_ it - is an unending endeavour. 

Defeat one enemy and another will take its place.

There can be no end.

Eventually, he slows down. Eventually, he learns that there is no going back. That even if he’s saving every universe at the speed of light, he can never return to his family.

It nearly ruins him when he makes peace with the realisation that he will never know Mia as anything other than his baby girl. That he’ll never see Felicity again.

That for all his talk about legacy and heroism, his legacy really is -

_Just this._

* * *

 

Felicity thinks she’s in the Temporal Zone. 

That weird limbo place Sara used to tell her about where the Waverider would hang out in whenever the Legends had downtime in between bouts of time-travel.

She didn’t think that humans could exist in the Temporal Zone without a spaceship of some sort though, so maybe she’s wrong.

But she’s hardly ever wrong.

(Except that time when she convinced herself that Oliver would return and she wouldn’t have to raise her baby as a single mom, but look how that turned out.)

Still, it makes sense if she were in the Temporal Zone, or some version of it, because what better way to find ancient Gods and celestial beings that have been lost in time and space, than being _in_ the very fabric of time and space?

The Monitor wouldn’t have just sent her _here,_ for no reason, would he?

The thought gives her the extra push she needs to keep moving. She’s been wandering around for what feels like ages, but she’s not tired and not hungry, and maybe she’s being naive about it but for the first time in a long time, and certainly for the first time in the last fifteen or so years -

Felicity feels _hopeful._

* * *

 

He traverses space like he owns it now, because in a way, he does.

It’s his to watch over, to fix, to rebuild, and so despite the almost inconsequential ripple that set him off on this particular journey _this_ time, he feels responsible for it. 

There’s a tingle in his skin that makes him feel wary for some reason, and maybe even _more_ responsible for this anachronism than he usually does, but he pays that no mind.

It happens.

It’s not a surprise that some ripples feel more important than others, depending on what’s happened. And important or not, it’s his problem to deal with.

It’s exhausting. But he’s bound for eternity by a promise to save humanity, in every possible realm of existence, because somehow he’s the only person who can do it.

Who had been _willing_ to do it.

The years have given him perspective about his life - then and now - and even though he told Felicity _no regrets,_ sometimes he wonders what it would have been like if he’d just let Barry and Kara... die.

Morbid.

But who’s going to know?

No one.

Because he _has_ no one.

Not anymore.

He pushes on.

* * *

 

It starts at her toes.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been walking and she hopes it’s been in a straight line, but there was something she read about people walking in circles when they’re directionless and that’s... not ideal.

But the point is that the faint prickling heat at the base of her foot is startling, and she’s sure it’s _not_ from how much she’s walked.

It makes her stumble, and for a split second she remembers that she’s afraid of heights and that she’s essentially walking _on air_ and _suspended in space_ and then she scoffs and tells her fear to take a hike because she is. Suspended. In. Space. 

Which would be cool, if not for... everything else.

But when the heat starts creeping up her calves, seeping into her skin and heating her up from the inside out, she starts getting a little scared. The sensation is all kinds of weird and strange, like she’s stepped into a hot spring fully clothed and it makes her stop walking.

Which turns out to be a mistake, because when she tries to move again, she finds that she can’t.

They must know she’s here if this strange heat trap is anything to go by. They’ve caught her traipsing through their territory uninvited so she’s on the right track, at least.

The bleak darkness that she’s gotten so used to slowly fades, replaced by hues of green and blue and red and if she weren’t so nervous, she’d be marvelling at how pretty everything is right now.

But she _is_ nervous, and the cold grip of fear around her heart makes her think about how she’s left her daughter, and her son, and her _life,_ as desolate as it had been, back wherever her Earth is now.

How she literally walked through a strange portal with the same man who took her whole _heart_ away from her twenty years ago, trusting him, and maybe she shouldn’t have?  

What if she’s made a mistake?

What if they just... kill her?

Her children are going to live the rest of their lives without their parents. William, for the second time. Third, if she’s being pedantic about it.

Her chest constricts as the doubt engulfs her.

She thought she was ready.

The heat is suffocating and she crumples to the ground, still rooted to the spot.

She really, really thought she would see him again before the end.

She’s... lost so much. She’s lived her life so selflessly for so long and all she wanted was just this one thing for herself, to see Oliver again. To see the love of her life one last time -

And it appears that the universe won’t even let her have _that._

She struggles with her shirt, pulling it up to her nose to shield herself from the cloying taste of smoke and ash.

She really thought this would work.  

_Oliver. William. Mia._

_I love you._

The heat snakes around her, clawing up her body, reaching around her throat and it takes everything in her to suck in another breath, gasping for air as the reds and greens and blues all merge into darkness again and then -

_Felicity Smoak_

A discombobulated voice resonates around her.

_Why have you summoned us?_

* * *

 

 

This isn’t familiar.

He usually gets more of a feel for what he’s dealing with the closer he gets to the ripple. But this one feels strange. It feels bright. Like light and happiness and good, and not at all like something he has to _save_... 

_Oh._

Pain pierces right through him, down the middle of his entire body and Oliver gasps at the sensation, hands clutching his chest.

He drops his bow.

Falls to his knees.

_“Oliver.”_

No. No. It can’t be. That sounds like -

Light bursts all around him, blinding, warm, _comforting,_ and Oliver screams. He _screams,_ because he knows now what this means. Right in his soul, burning in his gut, he knows what -

“Oliver.”

Tears stream down his face at the sound of her voice and he fights through the ache, battles through the implication of what’s happening around him.

He’s practically a God, a celestial being, and look at him now, brought to his knees by the mere thought of her and the sound of her voice. He doesn’t want to look up from the ground.

Because if she’s _here_ \- then she’s...

“I figured it out.”

Oh God, he’s missed her voice. Missed her. Missed _everything_ -

“Oliver, get up, please."

It’s the desperation in her voice that does it. Pull him out of the pit of anger and despair and loss and so he does.

He gets up.

And she’s right there, resplendent, with shorter blonde hair that still glows the way he remembers, lips turned up in that smirk that he _loves so much._

“Felicity,” he cries. “You shouldn’t be here.” 

“I know.” Her voice sounds ethereal. Echoes around him, in him. Part of him. “Because I’m disturbing the balance, I know.”

“Yes,” he chokes out. If she knows, then why? Why is she doing this? He didn’t sacrifice his _entire existence_ for -

“I thought I’d never see you again,” she murmurs, coming closer, radiating light that he thought he’d never see again. “I thought I made a mistake. That I’d... I’d waited too long.”

He doesn’t understand. How is she here? She was meant to live. To keep their kids safe. To live _a normal life_. 

“ _Felicity_.”

“But I figured it out. Took me a while, but I figured it out.”

Her hands come up to touch his face and he melts into her. Drinks in the familiar feel of her skin against his, and right there, right under his chest...

He feels his heart start beating again.

“The Monitor was wrong.”

Her words wash over him, soothing the cracks and fissures that had formed in his soul.

“Taking you didn’t restore any balance to the world,” she continues. “Your deal was rigged from the start.”

He only half-listens to her, part of him unwilling to believe that she’s here. With him. Holding him. Cradling his face in her tiny hands, peering up at him like he’s still the love of her life.

“You... Oliver, my love, were worth ten times the lives you exchanged yourself for. They took too much when they took you. They _created_ an imbalance.”

“That’s not how -”

That’s not how it works, he wants to say. But the words get caught in his throat, because she’s kissing him now, thoroughly, lovingly, not an ounce of resentment between them.

Why doesn’t she hate him for what he’s done to her? For leaving her?

“Now they have to make it right.”

Nothing about what she’s saying makes sense. Her being here doesn't make sense.

But.

 _She_ made sense. She always did. Always will.

“Felicity...”

“We’re going home, Oliver.”

* * *

 

-

-

-

-

-

 

“Shh, baby, Daddy’s sleeping.”

He wakes up to the gentle cooing of his daughter, her tiny fists bumping against his jaw, before the weight of her body lifts from his chest.

“Let’s go get you changed and we can come back to cuddle with Daddy, okay?”

He groans, blinking the sleep away from his eyes. He’s disoriented, confused and okay, he just woke up but he feels bone-tired and like he’s been awake for eons, his muscles screaming for attention.

“Felicity?”

And there she is, wearing his grey Henley as a dress, hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, grinning at him as she pads back into their bedroom with their baby in her arms.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” she chuckles. “Sorry we woke you, but Mia was stinking up the room.”

“Uh. Okay.”

He feels like he’s been drugged. Fragments of images flit through his mind’s eye, but he cant make sense of any of them. He’s fighting, and not fighting. Floating through dark rivers of murky water, screaming into emptiness...

Pain. So much pain.

“I think I had a really bad dream,” he murmurs as Felicity climbs back into bed.

“Yeah? You wanna talk about it?” she asks, placing their squirmy child on his chest, and then fitting herself into him, draping an arm over him and Mia. His hand curls around her form automatically, sliding into the soft tresses of her hair.

“I... I wouldn’t know where to start, I think?”

“Hmm, okay. Tell me later then.”

He’s happy to let it go for now, cocooned in the warmth of his little family.

Until he remembers.

He _remembers._

Vividly.

He can’t help the panic in his voice. The disbelief.

The awe.

_“Felicity.”_

She groans sleepily, kicking him in the shins for disturbing her peace. “What now?”

“Felicity, I think... I think I... you -”

He doesn’t want to alarm her, in case he _is_ losing it. In case all of it had been nothing but a bad dream. But can’t ignore the fact that it all _felt_ real. 

The pain, the anguish, the regret, the anger. He felt it. For years, and years and then _she_ was there and now they’re _here_ and -

“Babe, just say what you wanna say,” she prods gently.

Mia gurgles at him too, like she’s backing up her mother and his heart skips beat. Flutters excitedly beneath his chest because there was a time when he thought this would never be possible ever again.

“Felicity, I think you saved me,” he whispers. “Across the entire multiverse, through time, and space and everything in between. You _saved_ me.” 

He doesn’t know how to convey the importance of what he’s telling her. That he had to live a long, lonely life without her, and their baby and any form of happiness until her. Until she fixed it, until -

“I don’t know how to explain it,” he chokes out, overwhelmed. “But you brought me back. I was trapped, and alone and you... you came for me.”

“Oliver.” Her hands curve over his face as she rises up over him. Her thumbs swipe under his eyes, wiping the errant tears falling down his face.

“Oliver,” she repeats. She’s looking at him with a sly glint in her eyes, a teasing, knowing smirk on her face. Somehow, he thinks, she looks... different.

Like she’s hiding the secrets to the entire universe in her gaze.

“I wondered how long it would take for you to remember,” she murmurs, her tongue peeking through her teeth as she runs her hands all over his face, through his hair, and then leans down to kiss him.

“I told you I’d find you again, remember?” she whispers. She pulls back, eyes shining, proud of herself.

He blinks dumbly at her. _No._

That’s - _that_ conversation happened... _before._ A long time ago. When he went away. When it all went to hell and he left her.

So, how is she _here?_ How are _they_ here? Right now? Like - 

He gulps. “But _how? Why_ did they -”

Felicity laughs, and it’s the most heavenly sound he’s ever heard in his life, and he’s... been to heaven. Kind of.

“Why?” She settles back against his side, lips pressing under his jaw, flirty, light, easy. Unburdened.

“‘Cause we’re bigger than the freakin’ universe, remember?”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is. Hope everyone has recovered. 
> 
> Twitter: @griever_11


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